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Writer Margaret Atwood to speak at Princeton

Posted October 4, 2012; 04:37 p.m.

by Mary Hayes

Author Margaret Atwood will deliver the Farnum Lecture on "Future Imperfect: The Clock Strikes Midnight" at 8 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 16, 2012, in McCosh Hall, Room 50, on the Princeton campus. Her talk will feature an investigation into horrid and near-horrid literary futures, beginning with Edgar Allen Poe’s "The Masque of the Red Death" and continuing with a romp through various unsanitary corners of times to come, including the "zombie apocalypse." Why now, and what next?

The Farnum Lectures were founded in 1939 by a bequest of George L. Farnum, Class of 1894, in memory of his brother, J. Edward Farnum, Class of 1890.

Atwood is the author of more than 50 volumes of poetry, children’s literature, fiction and nonfiction and is perhaps best known for her novels, which include "The Edible Woman" (1970), "The Handmaid's Tale" (1983), "The Robber Bride" (1994), "Alias Grace" (1996) and "The Blind Assassin," which won the prestigious Booker Prize in 2000. Atwood's dystopic novel, "Oryx and Crake," was published in 2003. "The Tent" (mini-fictions) and "Moral Disorder" (short stories) both appeared in 2006. Her most recent volume of poetry, "The Door," was published in 2007. Her nonfiction book "Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth" part of the Massey Lecture series, appeared in 2008, and her most recent novel, "The Year of the Flood," was published in 2009. Atwood's work has been published in more than 40 languages, including Farsi, Japanese, Turkish, Finnish, Korean, Icelandic and Estonian.